Treasure in the sense of evidence
The title promises treasure, but the real prizes at Petra are not hoards of gold. The city was a trading centre, and what excavations have recovered are buildings, inscriptions, pottery, household objects and, in one remarkable case, a Byzantine archive. These finds do not change the picture of Petra overnight. They fill in who lived there, how the city worked, and what happened to it after the Nabataean kings were gone.
Most of the visible tombs were emptied long ago, by weathering, reuse and robbery, so the city centre and its houses have often been more informative than the monuments that attract the crowds.
The Great Temple complex
South of the colonnaded street lies one of the largest buildings at Petra, long known simply as the Great Temple. It has been excavated by a Brown University team since the 1990s. The complex is laid out on terraces, with a monumental staircase, a paved forecourt, a columned hall and a small theatre-like auditorium. Capitals with elephant heads, a distinctive Petra form, were found among the debris.
Calling it a temple is a convention. The building’s function is debated, and some scholars think it served both religious and civic or administrative purposes. Excavation showed that it was built in the late Nabataean period, then repaired and altered under Roman rule, before earthquakes and later collapse damaged it. The site also includes a bathhouse and water installations, in the tradition of Roman public baths, which shows how Petra adapted to wider Mediterranean habits.
The Petra Church and its scrolls
In 1990 a Byzantine church was uncovered near the city centre. It has three aisles and floor mosaics with animals, seasons and human figures. The mosaics are generally assigned to the 5th and 6th centuries CE, and they show that Christianity was well established at Petra after Roman rule had changed the city.
In 1993 archaeologists found, in a side room, about 140 carbonised papyrus scrolls. They had been charred by fire, which paradoxically preserved them. The texts are in Greek and are usually dated to the mid-6th century CE. They are documents of ordinary life: property transfers, inheritance arrangements, tax and legal disputes, and agreements among members of a local elite family. A papyrus scroll collection of this kind is rare in the region, and these texts offer details about landholding, kinship and local administration in late Roman Petra that are otherwise hard to recover. The scrolls are unrelated to the much older Dead Sea Scrolls, which are a different kind of find with a different date and purpose.
Temples and sanctuaries
Other excavated buildings add detail. The Temple of the Winged Lions, on the north side of the colonnaded street, takes its name from winged-lion decoration on its columns and was a Nabataean sanctuary with later use. The Qasr al-Bint, still partly standing, is a major temple associated by many scholars with Dushara, the chief Nabataean god. Excavation of these places has helped establish a sequence of building, damage and reuse, though dates are sometimes debated.
Houses, pottery and painted plaster
Digs on the ridge known as ez-Zantur and elsewhere uncovered private houses with painted plaster, stucco and fine pottery. The painted decoration, in classical styles, shows how wealthy residents imitated Hellenistic and Roman fashions. Nabataean fine ware, thin and often painted with plant motifs, has been found in large quantities and is an important dating tool. Archaeologists use changes in pottery shape and decoration, together with stratigraphy and coins, to build the chronology of the city, while radiocarbon dating is applied to organic material when it survives.
Tombs and burials
Excavations in front of the Treasury in the early 2000s reportedly uncovered burial chambers beneath the forecourt, a reminder that many tombs lie below ground and are not visible from the surface. Other excavated burial areas have produced bones, grave goods and information on how families and groups used the necropolis. Analysis of human remains is part of the wider toolkit of archaeological methods, but there is still much to learn about the Petra population.
Remote sensing and new questions
Modern survey has changed how Petra is studied. In 2016 researchers reported a large, previously unrecognised monumental structure south of the city centre, identified from satellite images and drones and then tested on the ground. Later work suggested a large platform with a staircase, but the structure’s purpose is still being investigated. LiDAR survey and other remote sensing methods are increasingly used at sites like this one, because large parts of the landscape remain unexcavated and the surface can hide a lot.
What the finds add up to
Taken together, the evidence shows Petra as a real working city with temples, houses, baths, markets and gardens, not just a necropolis. It also shows a long afterlife, with Roman rebuilding and a Christian community continuing into the 6th century. For visitors, that means the ruins in the valley centre repay as much attention as the rock-cut tombs, and for scholars it means that new surprises remain possible, because only a portion of the ancient city has been excavated.